Tarlo, Emma. 2018. Great Expectations: the Role of the Wig Stylist (Sheitel Macher) in Orthodox Jewish Salons

Tarlo, Emma. 2018. Great Expectations: The role of the wig stylist (sheitel macher) in orthodox Jewish salons. Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Special issue on Hair, 22(6), pp. 569-591. ISSN 1362-704X [Article] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23331/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] 1 Great Expectations: the role of the wig stylist (sheitel macher) in orthodox Jewish salons Emma Tarlo Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW. Telephone: +44 (0)20 7919 7804 [email protected] Emma Tarlo is a Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths. Her research focusses on dress, material culture and the body in transcultural contexts and on new modes of ethnographic writing and curation. Her books include Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (Coomaraswamy Prize 1998), Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith (2010) and Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair (winner of the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing 2017). 2 Abstract Keywords: wigs, sheitels, Jewish, hair, salon Wigs are curious liminal objects that hover somewhere between the categories of prosthesis and clothing and offer a variety of possibilities for the transformation of appearances from hair substitution and covering to disguise. In this article I focus on the particular demands and expectations placed upon the sheitel (Yiddish term for wig) worn by increasing numbers of married Jewish women who identify as frum (Torah-observant). Based on research in Jewish wig salons in Britain and the United States and on Jewish online forums, internet discussions and blogs with a wider geographic reach, this article sets out to show the complex web of material, social, emotional, aesthetic and moral concerns that cluster around the sheitel and to highlight the role of the sheitel macher (wig stylist) in managing these anxieties and expectations. If all wigs are fraught with expectations in terms of their capacity to enable successful social performances, sheitels, it is argued, carry a particularly high burden of expectations owing to their contested and multivalent role as material embodiments of religious commitment, social status and fashion competence and owing to the ambivalent feelings many Jewish women have towards their wigs. A. The Paradox of the sheitel The sheitel occupies a contested place in contemporary Judaism. It is worn by a wide variety of women from Ashkenazi backgrounds including not only those who belong to strict Haredi sects but also other Jewish women who identify with varying degrees of orthodoxy.1 Some favor it as an appropriate form of head covering which serves the purpose of keeping a woman’s hair concealed whilst at the same time conveniently offering the appearance of hair. Yet precisely because it is made from hair, the sheitel is considered redundant or even hypocritical by others who suggest that wigs defeat the very purpose of hair covering. Within orthodox Judaism, kishoi roi (the law of head covering) is intended not only to keep a married woman’s hair private to all men except her husband but also to indicate her marital status to others and ensure that her modesty is maintained. A glamorous sheitel that looks realistic and is often intentionally more beautiful than a woman’s own hair seems to fail on both the latter counts. Some Jewish wig wearers respond to the accusation from other frum Jews that their wigs are too realistic by wearing a hat on top, thereby adding an extra layer of modesty and making their marital status explicit. This has given rise to the development of collective styles of head covering amongst some sects. For example in Williamsburg, an orthodox neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York, women from the Satmar community are recognizable by the small pillar box hats they wear on top of their neat well-coiffed above-the-shoulder sheitels. In the main shopping street of Lee Avenue there is even a specialist shop selling a wide variety of elegant silk black and navy hats designed for wearing on top of wigs. (see Fig. 1) The nuances of the sheitel tend to be lost on people who identify as conservative or reform Jews, most of whom consider head covering unnecessary. For example, a Reform responsum in 1990 reads, “We Reform Jews object vigorously to this requirement for women, which places them in an inferior position and sees them primarily in a sexual role” (Salzberg n.d.). In their view sheitels are a primitive hangover from the past, indicative of oppressive patriarchal norms which 3 should have no place in contemporary Judaism. At the other end of the spectrum, some strictly frum Haredi women consider the sheitel insufficiently modest by comparison to other forms of head-covering such as scarves, turbans and snoods. For example on the website, Tznius Tips, an authoritative rabbonit (rabbi’s wife or female leading authority) dressed in a deep black hat can be seen delivering a lecture on head covering in which she specifies that sheitels are only permissible if they meet the three criteria of being recognizable as wigs, being no longer than the top vertebra of the spinal cord and being neat and modest. The video of the lecture ends with a disclaimer on the screen which states that “there is no kosher wig today” as contemporary wigs do not meet the condition that they are recognizable as wigs.2 These different readings of the sheitel make sheitel wearing subject to a variety of moral judgments from friends, relatives, rabbis and the wider community, adding pressure to headwear choices. Whether she likes it or not, a Jewish woman’s headwear places her within landscapes of orthodoxy and is often read as a barometer of community affiliation and a litmus test of her level of piety and religious observance (Schreiber 2006, 14; Carrel 1999; Tarlo 2016a). The religious logic of the sheitel is made more complex by the fact that it is not a traditional form of Jewish headwear and there are no biblical references to wigs in the Torah (Jewish bible). What the Torah and the Talmud (interpretive texts) do contain, however, are passages that associate hair covering with virtue and hair exposure with sexual impropriety and immorality. There is, for example, a much-cited reference in the Torah to a married woman suspected of adultery being shamed in public by a priest uncovering and exposing her hair (Numbers 5:18). Also popularly cited is a passage from the Talmud describing a woman who has seven sons who are all high priests. Asked how she merited such sons, she replied that not even the rafters of her own house had ever seen her hair (cited in Salzberg n.d.). From such references comes the assumption that virtuous Jewish wives traditionally kept their hair bound and covered and that Torah-observant Jews should do the same. According to Jewish law (Halakhoth) a woman’s hair is considered erotic (ervah) and along with other areas of the body including the neck, upper arms, elbows, thighs and knees, should be kept covered in conformity with the principals of modesty (tzniuth). There is a considerable body of rabbinical opinion offering commentary on these matters. For example, in Eliyahu Ki Tov’s The Jew and his Home (a manual for Torah-observant Jews), it states, “A woman’s hair is lovely. Reserved for her husband’s eyes, her loveliness is sacred, in keeping with the laws of modesty” (1963, 77, cited in Carrel 165). According to some sources, a woman’s failure to cover her hair offers her husband grounds for divorce (ibid). The close relationship between religious orthodoxy, patriarchy and domestic hair politics is playfully captured in a cartoon by New Yorker cartoonist, Benjamin Schwartz (Fig. 2). Today injunctions about hair covering are reproduced in a variety of formats from circulars, posters, pamphlets, tapes, YouTube videos, websites and blogs. Most women who self identify as ‘frum’ and who follow the teachings and interpretations of orthodox rabbis, consider head covering to be part of the commandment of modesty (tzniuth) which is one of the 613 commandments (mitzvot) that observant Jews are entreated to follow. Whilst such textual interpretations explain the fact of head covering they do not explain the form. Why sheitels? For this it is necessary to turn not to religious texts but to fashion history. As Leila Leah Bronner points out in her historiography of Jewish head covering practices, the sheitel first came into fashion when European Jewish women began to follow Parisian ladies of fashion in the sixteenth century 4 (Bronner 1993). The adoption of the wig by Jewish women was initially condemned by most rabbinical authorities either on the grounds that wigs represented inappropriate emulation of the ‘ways of nations’ or on the grounds that wigs could evoke the same feelings of sexual arousal in men as a woman’s own hair (ibid). The fact that women persisted in wearing their sheitels in spite of rabbinical condemnation highlights a dynamic that has continued to characterize sheitel debates ever since. As I have discussed elsewhere, the sheitel cannot be understood exclusively as a religious phenomenon. Its evolution and development have always depended on a relationship of creative friction between religious regulation and fashion that has played out differently at different historical moments (Tarlo 2016b).

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